Guild Wars 2

Your requirements contradict each other to a certain extent, depending on how you define 24/7 action. Most servers would have a presence 24/7 at least, but if you want something approaching even (“not running from enemy zergs”) then your best bets are also sadly servers that tend to queue a lot.

Crapgame.6519:

Title says mid season report. Based on the fun fact piece in Arena Net’s blog, here is my question:

Quote:Fun Facts

Eight worlds remain undefeated, beating every opponent they’ve faced so far.
•North America: Blackgate, Fort Aspenwood, Henge of Denravi, and Sorrow’s Furnace
•Europe: Vizunah Square, Desolution, Drakkar Lake, and Ruins of Surmia"

Of the eight world that are undefeated what is their 24×7 coverage?

I’d be willing to bet that they have all three time zones covered. I know having fought 2 of the NA servers via playing on Ebay that each server that won so far had crazy night coverage and large zergs (higher population). So far none have appeared to be related to any great skill.

Probably 99% of WvW matches (since the game launched, so that’s a lot of matches) are decided by coverage alone. It’s nothing new.

Server pride means nothing because WvW is 100% a casual game mode where the only thing that matters is population.

Pride in your server’s wins is basically pride at being the most populated server in the matchup (for like 99% of matchups – I know there have been a few nail-biters in the history of WvW but those are definitely the exception and not the norm).

That being said there’s definitely something about attachment to established communities. It’s usually guild-based, but some servers do have strong cores.

Rama.6439:

TC’s militia is made up of fair weather players, they can’t get better cause they aren’t real WvW players and probably aren’t even playing this match up as they are up against a T1 server.

Many of us on casual fairweather server Tarnished Coast haven’t yet mastered the art of having more players online when the enemy doesn’t have as much – I hear transferring to T1 is a quick fix to that problem but we’re hoping at something a little more long term and a little less pathetic-looking. Not a lot of success so far, sadly T_T

Rama.6439:

electriette.8952:

Well anyone who is anyone knows that ebg is pugland, and my guilds zerg never runs on ebg on reset, take a look at my tag, we were on TCBL for reset and we wiped 1 time, and we dont get farmed, and we wiped many zergs that night. Live and Learn kid, check what guild you are trying to troll before you troll.

my point —-————-

(insert 10 metres here)

your head —-————

1. TIL that stating facts (yes, the JQ zerg in EBG was farmed, idek why you’re trying to defend it by saying ’it’s pugland’. that’s a nice way to compliment your server’s standard skill, i guess?) equates to trolling. oh fork.
2. why is your guild tag relevant? how is it relevant? when did i ever say that it was your guild i was referring to? are you reading too much into this? please tell me you’re not THAT sensitive. :<

i’m almost ashamed to say that we were once servermates. eugh.

Never said I was sensitive, and us beating on you now and pushing you all back into your keep, thats called farming, we will tell you all when you can come out and play, thats how its done baby… please dont get upset over this, it is just for fun after all, lol.

After all, why would I be upset over winning? LMAO… Only thing I am the least bit upset over is my buddy being on TC when he should be here sharing in the spoils of our victories, Miss ya Chuu…

I’m glad you are enjoying yourself! Victory is a wonderful thing, especially when it’s hard-earned

I mean, it’s not like anyone can just “win” in this WvW thing by moving to a new server. No Sir! You gotta be skilled! Mm yes. Lots of skill. And moxie. You go FARM those poor sods and hurt their feelings! Like a big boy yes?

Wait, if everyone is free bags and farms everyone else for bags then my brain asplode =(

Also lol at that angry-sounding guy. I think he just wants to be accepted somewhere ;(

Variety is important. The current system allows some servers to get crushed by a variety of other servers.

huehuehuehue

Gunsen.3894:

What if rank 27 was coupled with rank 4? What if Anet merged a lower rank server with a higher ranked one and did Leagues that way? Rotating the teams out every week to give some lower ranked servers a chance at some glory….

Just a thought. Comments? Concerns? Complaints?

That’s like admitting some servers are dying, not going to happen. Data™ shows that wvw is doing fine and more players are enjoying it every day!

goldensurfer.8406:

Ofcourse WvW should not be balacned but what is the point of letting rank 27 world play against rank 18 and rank 19.

Doesn’t make sense.

Variety is important, how else would rank 27 know if they can stack up to 18 and 19?

I guess sometimes it just makes all the players in 27 leave forever instead, but hey kitten happens.

It’s OK this is all part of data gathering for master plan

One day I killed a player from an opposing server, then I concluded that all players on that server are terrible which made me feel really good about myself.

I also posted about it on the forums because I think other people playing the game really care about what I think of them.

Their design philosophy is to “never punish players for playing together”.

That basically means there won’t be a penalty for moving in big blobs, under combat mechanics that favor big blobs. The best way to play will therefore always be big blobs.

Yea, charge gold or impose risks for people to enter a game mode that already lags in terms of reward to nearly every thing else you can do outside of sPvP.

Sounds like a solid way to keep WvW healthy. It’s not like it was repeated over and over that this was supposed to be a casual mode that anyone can enter.

Rama.6439:

electriette.8952:

ykyk.2740:

Fuzzion.2504:

ykyk.2740:

Fuzzion.2504:

Borefest – Round 3

I think you guys need to recruit more.

I think AWE needs to stop beating me into a pulp 5 v 1(sometimes 2) . Not fair mate. Not fair at all.

Haha, you totally got us there! Yeah, we on TC during SEA time outnumber the enemy most of the time and kind of feel bad about it. That’s why I said you guys need to recruit more.

;)

BA DUM TSS
trying not to get infracted because all caps trying not to get infracted because all caps

also it looks like i could have a successful career by getting a dollar for every open field ac dropped by jq even if they outnumber the enemy

Heck, I’d be a rich man… </snip>

Sounds like you were rich enough to transfer to big servers

I want to win on a big server too! But I dunno how to farm gold from monster to transfer =( One day I will farm a lot of gold and transfer to #1 server, then I can laugh at everybody else like all the cool people do. Kinda like you!

I hope season 2 is scheduled for like 2017 or something. Spare the players please.

Fuzzion.2504:

ykyk.2740:

Fuzzion.2504:

Borefest – Round 3

I think you guys need to recruit more.

I think AWE needs to stop beating me into a pulp 5 v 1(sometimes 2) . Not fair mate. Not fair at all.

Haha, you totally got us there! Yeah, we on TC during SEA time outnumber the enemy most of the time and kind of feel bad about it. That’s why I said you guys need to recruit more.

;)

Oh god I feel so bad for you guys

Serious business is serious

Fuzzion.2504:

Borefest – Round 3

I think you guys need to recruit more.

T1 is where all the fights are at guys.

Nevermind T1 is 6 servers now, just go to the same 2 or 3. Because 24/7 fights. Fights fights fights.

Oh wait none of the matchups look remotely close whoooops. Fights anyone.

BG/SoR complaining about seeing each other too much? Wait for next season when you roll JQ’s schedule and fight 2 “T2” servers for 5 weeks in a row. Best fights 24/7.

Fuzzion.2504:

Congrats to JQ for winning this matchup

Pro tip: The fact that you can (accurately) declare this on the first day of the matchup makes the congratulations look really empty and just a little bit sad.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

ykyk.2740:

No no no no. You blockheads.

Anyone throwing “T1 NA” around like it still means anything doesn’t get a thing. “T1 NA” is the top SIX servers. Yes, this season BG faces SoR a lot. But notice JQ over there? Yes, HALF their season are blowouts because all the “competition” is in three servers.

Next season maybe BG gets 5 weeks of facing #4-5-6. Nobody knows. You want to “find fights”? Keep joining the weakest servers until the top 6 are reasonably balanced. There you go, FIGHTS EVERY WEEK.

Logic too stronk. Then again flocking to bloated servers to let your guilds slowly die from queues and lack of interest seems to be the top plan nowadays.

The top 6 will never be reasonably balanced. You’re talking about several thousand (assuming daily turnout is only a fraction of roster size) international players distributing themselves evenly throughout all of them. That is stupidly optimistic.

Stacking T1, even with Leagues, still makes more sense for a guild or individual than expecting miraculous coverage for the rest of them.

If it becomes a problem, ANet will realize Leagues is stupid (seriously, it’s completely counter to what they said at the launch of the game, and that’s the reason why T1 servers are in this predicament) and remove it. Or the game will die.

You are right, of course. Reality hurts.

The incentives laid out by Anet and the interpretations by the player base has led to the current piece of kitten paradigm in WvW, and as you said there seems to no longer be a solution.

The game mode rewards stacking servers on a fundamental level, and all changes so far have basically promoted it. There is no way to beat a server that consistently fields more people, so all you have to do to win is to go to a server that already has a massive amount of people. People like to win – you make loot and feel good when you overrun enemies and take objectives, and stacking will always perpetuate itself.

The awful ppt system also ensures that servers will never be balanced, because there simply aren’t as many off-hours players as there are native “prime-time” players. That is to say, the servers may be labelled EU and NA, but the ppt war is won by the unnamed timezones – Oceanic and Asian (and perhaps EU on NA servers and vice versa). The vast majority of WvW players in these minority timezones are localized on a few servers – once these communities are established, they only grow bigger. New players from these timezones (many speaking their own languages) join servers with existing populations rather than spread out. WvW players from these time zones have no choice but to transfer to top servers in order to play with decent numbers of players who share their timezones or language. Top servers realize this and aggressively recruit for these timezones, further concentrating the player pool into the top 3 servers (this is for NA) – the result is that no server comes close to being able to compete ppt-wise against the top 3.

The reality of stacked timezones is that it affects all other players because of how upgrades work. Servers with massive advantages in specific timezones can not only gain a points lead simply by being there against no opposition, but also fortify the maps and make it even harder for the other servers. Even after the weaker servers endure their low-population hours and reach a state where numbers are comparable, all their holdings are wooden while the enemy’s are fortified.

I don’t have a solution to propose (if it were that simple someone would have thought of it already), just pointing out exactly how awful the current situation is for off-hours players that don’t play in the top 3 servers and have to face those servers every week thanks to the decision to include 6 servers in NA’s gold league.

De-stacking is NOT going to happen by itself, especially not in the off-hours where ALL matches are decided. If you guys can’t think of anything to help this, at least lock the obviously stacked servers together matchup-wise.

Chris.3290:

Yeah, Gold League is a snore 4-6

It’s OK guilds from all over the world are realizing the problem and transferring to the top 3 to ensure solid competition for all eternity, since the top 3 face each other all the time for good fights.

Oh wait durr

No no no no. You blockheads.

Anyone throwing “T1 NA” around like it still means anything doesn’t get a thing. “T1 NA” is the top SIX servers. Yes, this season BG faces SoR a lot. But notice JQ over there? Yes, HALF their season are blowouts because all the “competition” is in three servers.

Next season maybe BG gets 5 weeks of facing #4-5-6. Nobody knows. You want to “find fights”? Keep joining the weakest servers until the top 6 are reasonably balanced. There you go, FIGHTS EVERY WEEK.

Logic too stronk. Then again flocking to bloated servers to let your guilds slowly die from queues and lack of interest seems to be the top plan nowadays.

Why do people keep transferring to the top 3.

Go to Mags and SoS. kittenmit it’s like nobody understands it’s a 6-server league.

Butter.3024:

No, no, and hell no.

Very cogent and well-thought out argument to add to the discussion, very impressive.

Might I venture a guess that you are on a server with a significant off-hours presence?

Just want to say hats off to mag for very very effective ppt play during your off-hours. During oceanic/SEA prime I don’t see too many of you guys but the ppt is always healthy, and your guys are always on point with the ninjas. I’m not sure if it’s because our guys during those hours tend to tunnel vision SoS for the fights (has been my experience so far) but the consistency is impressive.

(Especially for a server that insists the hardest out of all that they don’t care about ppt!)

TC actually can’t kill anyone without outnumbering them at least 30 to 1, so any less and we need to catch the person by surprise.

Does Anet force people at gunpoint to transfer? Doubt it. Nobody who transferred for the leagues can legitimately complain about queues – you are just dumb if you didn’t expect something like this to happen. As for the original residents – tough luck.

Really nice to see FA is still going strong. It’s just really weird to think that we won’t face FA for the whole of the next two months, doesn’t feel right at all.

Lol @ this being important.

deathTouch.9706:

You guys are complaining about hard/fair matches when Mag just pulled all-nighters so that we could have consistently outnumbered fights and avoid seal-clubbing in Silver league?

Man T1 really is full-to-the-brim with bandwagoning scrubs.

Basically this.

ITT people care about “wins” in a format where participation decides everything and everyone can pay money to become a winner.

Easy matchups are boring matchups with nothing to do. Whatever happened to “we transfer to T1 for the fights”?

The whole point of leagues in the first place is to mix up the matches as much as possible within each league. The proposed system above has the same matchup for 4 out of the 7 weeks.

If there are 3 stacked servers that clearly overpower the 3 underdog servers in a league then the problem of “easy weeks” will happen all the time, if you want to bypass it then why even have leagues in the first place. Put the top 3 together and have them fight each other forever (I think many people will be fine with this arrangement but hey variety woohoo).

Anyone who recently transferred to a top tier server for leagues and is complaining about this should just go lie down for awhile and re-think about how you make decisions in life.

Seems like we may have this matchup twice (again on the final week) if things happen similarly to the EU ladder. Most sensible arrangement imo. The T1 trio gets 2 matches together as well.

Also queues.

1. Mechanisms to address population imbalance. It’s only getting worse and worse with time, and super-stacked servers prevent any matchmaking systems from working properly.

2. Incentive adjustments to reward defensive play/grunt work (sentry, running supply, walking yaks, operating trebs)

3. Discourage Blob-centric gameplay. The side with numbers should have an advantage, but running with everybody together in a lag-inducing mass should not be the best way to get it.

We give out a lot of cookies

Watch for bad guilds to start moving from the bottom of that list to near the top real soon.

So exciting.

You want to join a T1 server to fight against greater odds?

The league has 6 servers. 3 of them are underdogs and will face these “greater odds” all the time, I’ll let you figure out which.

PariahX.6970:

Rama.6439:

If your Idea of fun is a dead Battlefield then yes I guess it will be. But all the good fights are in the Gold, and will stay there probably for awhile.

I think you might be a bit wrong about the Gold League unless you enjoy lag, queues and 6 weeks of unbalanced fights. ~^ There will be one week of intense 24/7 battles in the Gold when JQ, BG & SoR get matched which will probably be so laggy and queued up as to drive the rest of the casual players away from Tier 1 forever but I am sure they will be happier without us around anyways. ><

Maybe the most intense fights will be server mates fighting each other to get on the maps.

“Guys I heard Jormag just landed”

I thought the tagline in every T1 “talent-acquirement” drive was “24-7 fights ALL the time”. Now it’s “competitive” because different servers get to overwhelm the opposition at different times of the day?

This reminds me of the TC vs SoS matchup way back in like October last year where the 2 servers literally went like +670 depending on time zone and just traded the entire map back and forth against no opposition for a week, with TC taking it because we ticked at +670 for longer than SoS (the third server was generally a no-show, GoM or something). The final score didn’t look too bad, but it was probably the least balanced or interesting matchup of all time.

You know competition in gold league WvW is dead when “the scores end up looking close” is an excuse for competitiveness.

I don’t understand you guys, there’s no stacked server in this matchup. All the servers still have some keeps and stuff they’re holding.

On an unrelated note, I think there should be one designated server that only plays WvW against itself where all the maps only have NPCs as enemies. Periodically the objectives will randomly flip so they can be recapped. This server will win every week and be awarded THREE bonus chests, as well as a customized finisher to showcase their status of consistency and prowess. It should also be free to transfer to this server.

Best idea or best idea?

Swamurabi.7890:

sostronk.8167:

@Swamurabi.7890, its a product of the games design. That is, this whole T1 debacle. I have played from the lowest ranked to highest ranked servers. I did enjoy my time in lower tiers more tbh. But at the end of the day I always had this negative feeling that no matter what I did, I was always going to lose. Its all a numbers game and the map caps allow for T1 servers to be T1 servers. I think if there were greater restrictions on this that things wouldn’t be so bad. About a week back Devon Carter did a Q&A on an external website and I questioned the map cap and he skipped my question. I don’t think they ever intend on WvW being a balanced fight where from time to time one server or another will win or lose. Its not about skills or tactics, its about numbers. There isn’t a single week where I have felt that skill or tactics have decided the outcome of a match, only the player turnout. The whole claim of recruiting and having a good community to get more players is complete balony. Its up to anet to fix what they are implementing and they dont intend on doing that.

But that’s the main problem with WvW…. It could be so much greater than it is now IF Anet did a better job at trying to make WvW closer to being balanced. For every blowout matchup. there’s one high or very high server that has players in WvW and TWO servers where the players have no incentive to play. All the way up to T2 you have coverage issues where players on high or very high servers have no incentive to play WvW.

They conceded that WvW is an inherently unbalanced game mode (this is true to a certain extent because of how levels and gear come into play, as well as the fact that numbers tend to prevail). Then, instead of working with what they have, the devs adopted the “it’s unbalanced anyway so everything we do to make it MORE unbalanced is justifiable” approach and just went wild.

It’s sad to see.

Not much. Everyone should move to T1 servers ASAP to guarantee getting amazing rewards.

sminkiottone.6972:

Study the basics of home economics, you will thank me later.

They made this trick to gain the last and every bit of money they can before the league starts.

Just economics. Home economics is like cooking and stuff.

But yes, you are right. Not that it should surprise anyone.

Terrahero.9358:

LoneWolfie.1852:

As topic dictates.

I’d also wonder when we can finally get sigils and runes in WvW. There’s still a bunch that are pve/dungeon exclusive.

Haralin.1473:

or ascended weapons for badges

Never.
You see, badges are no longer a WvW currency. You can get a lot of badges from your achievement reward chests. And most achievementpoints, by far, come from pve.

PvE players have litterally thousands of badges stacked up from these achievement chests. Whereas a lot of WvW players actually spend those badges on siege, or to get a little bit more coin, or to gear an alt.

Adding something that could also be worthwhile for pve players to a WvW vendor, like sigils or ascended gear, for badges will more then anything be a benefit to pve players.

This always mystified me. Why the hell are badges so easy to get for people who don’t even WvW? Completely defeats the purpose of a WvW-specific currency. You don’t even have to pretend to try to WvW or grind EB jump puzzles for the gift of battle anymore.

Play the way you want™, but if lots of PvE people buy lots of gems then we’re going to make everything 100 times easier for them, sorry guys.

azerte.4365:

Looking at http://mos.millenium.org/na it seems that NSP is (predicted) to drop to 17th place if they keep this up. I’m curious on how this will turn out, it all depends on what kaineng and NSP do this week.

I hope we stay in bronze league, I don’t feel like getting steamrolled for weeks just to ‘punish’ Devon. No need to kill a server just to make a statement.

Indeed, why do that when you can kill the whole of WvW to make a statement?

Swamurabi.7890:

T1 servers don’t dictate matches, but they do prevent other servers from becoming T1 by leeching talent away from lower tiers. The reason BG and SoR became T1 was becasue servers like HoD, ET, SbI, SoS and IoJ had transfers OUT of T1.

Careful there buddy, T1 servers don’t recruit. They train their own talent, and attract players to their servers with the strength of their community.

Everyone knows that. If you aren’t in T1 yet you must not enjoy communities.